Isms, in my opinion, are not good

Hoo, boy. Well, I think I managed to avoid any inadvertent crass insensitivity that one time I decided it would be fun to talk about rape. Let’s see if I can keep that up while blathering about sexism.

I just read through this post, by the mighty Rebecca Watson of Skepchick, and it made me enlist my desk in the service of causing severe blunt trauma to my cranium. Not what Rebecca had to say, but the parts where she quoted some of the people responding to the recent discussion about sexism on the SGU podcast.

One of the other Skepchicks, Carrie, had been on the show as a guest, to discuss what she’d recently blogged about gender-biased attitudes in skepticism. I thought they had an interesting, insightful, well reasoned discussion, during which the other (white male) podcast hosts stepped back a little, but still got involved and asked sensible questions as best they could.

To be honest, I kinda just got on with my life after it finished. I don’t think I really need to be further converted to the cause of feminism, and it doesn’t play a very active role in my life, but it’s good to be reminded every so often that it’s an ongoing issue, which some people are still having problems with.

And then I see some men’s responses to hearing a couple of women taking a few minutes to discuss the possible under-representation of females in some area of life and what approaches might best encourage a more inclusive atmosphere. And then I get frownyface.

I’m a middle-class white male. I could probably be a lot dumber than I actually am, and still realise that I’m going to be speaking from the position of privilege in just about any discussion of discrimination or prejudice that I’m ever going to be involved in. It’s very clear that my gender and my race are doing fine, comparatively speaking. My country has had precisely one NWM (non white male) elected leader in its history. So has that big place across the pond, and their female president count is still stuck at zero. Men and women’s comparative roles started out as something that made biological sense, and have lingered in various forms throughout the various stages of civilisation. The oppression of women has been a constant historical fact, and is still ongoing.

None of this is changed by the fact that I happen to disapprove of sexism. Men are doing very comfortably. Women still sometimes have to struggle. Not all of them, not all the time, not everywhere, not in every situation – but enough that white male me can’t really tell quite how much of a drag it is.

So, because my lot are doing fine, how can I understand what sort of oppression is going on, so that I know what’s worth taking a stand against, and being careful to avoid? Well, I could try letting women talk about their experiences, and maybe paying attention to what they say. Because, y’know, they’re the ones actually feeling the discrimination here.

The panel of speakers at TAM this year was almost unanimously white and male, as were a majority of the attendees. If women were finding it as easy as men to get involved in this movement and get themselves represented as a part of it, then you wouldn’t expect those numbers to be so different. How did the women present at TAM feel about this imbalance? Did they think it was indicative of any deep-seated problem, or that some kind of action should be taken to redress the balance?

If you’re not a woman, you really, really need to shut up and let them answer this. [Edit 12/08/09: I’ve clarified this a bit in a comment below. What I mean is that men should shut up for long enough for women to answer that kind of question, not that we should stay out of the discussion entirely.] Even if you’re smart, and sensitive, and inclusive, and all for equality of every kind, and know just how to sort it all out so that nobody’s discriminating against anybody, you do not get to assume that you can make this decision on your own.

If the only proposed solution is forced castration of the entire irredeemable half of the human species who are to blame for everything, then sure, make a stand for something more reasonable, express your concern that they might be going too far, and point out that this is also unhelpfully biased and exclusive.

But fuck, if women are feeling shut out by a male-dominated atmosphere, and the numbers are there to back them up, don’t start whining about how whiny they’re getting. Don’t let your first response to a potentially legitimate complaint – made in as calm and reasoned and generous a manner as you could ask for, lodged by a demographic that consists of half the population of the planet and who have a history of being beaten down by the other half – be to tell them to shut up because they’re wrong to feel the way they do. That should not be where you instinctively, immediately go to when someone’s not happy with the way things are.

A lot of the responses seem to bring up the factor of whether the women in question are young and attractive. Even the fact that that’s considered relevant seems to highlight that there really is a significant gender difference in the way these things are talked about. I’m not that hot. I’m not aware that it’s ever held me back. To my knowledge, whether or not someone views me as a desirable mate has never swayed their thoughts on how interesting or welcome my presence at a gathering was. The fact that I’ve barely given these notions a moment’s thought is part of the privilege that not everyone has.

So when someone’s experiences are different from mine, and they claim to suffer from lacking a privilege that it wouldn’t even occur to me to realise I possess, the least I can do is keep my ears open long enough to try and find out what it’s like for them.

I consider myself a feminist. I don’t do much about it, but I can be spurred to write lengthy exposition like this in what I hope is a gender-positive manner. I do think it’s important. And I’m prepared to do my best to look really hard at my own behaviours, if I’m given cause to think that I’m screwing something up without realising. Some of these attitudes are pretty insidious. It’s scary sometimes how much things like incredibly out-dated stereotypes can whoosh right past me without registering at all until Sarah Haskins points out how offensive that just was.

With that all in mind, I open these questions to the floor. What should I be doing about this? Is there anything in particular I, as a well-meaning but sometimes hopelessly oblivious white guy, can do to encourage the kind of genuine inclusivity and equality which I’m sure is basically what we all want? Are you handling it okay without my interference? Have I managed to step accidentally in any steaming mounds of stupid during this rant itself?

I generally try to avoid posting anything this long without taking a break from it and re-drafting a print-out copy later, but it’s late and I just want to get this up before bed. I may revise it somewhat tomorrow.

“If you’re not a woman, you really, really need to shut up and let them answer this.

I’d beg to differ. If women are simply discussing reasons why they think they’re under-represented and what they could/should do about it, then you have a bit of a point.

If, however, they blame the way some women dress at TAM for the under-representation of women at TAM, then I see know reason why that should go unchallenged – by anyone who sees a problem with it (“We want more women – but not those kinds of women”). I put this only as an example and note that the issue was well and truly discussed and explained and, to some extent, apologised for (and a lot of women, it seems, agreed anyway) – not to resurrect that discussion.

If a middle-class white male can see what they believe is an obvious flaw in the reasoning, it would surely be helpful to point it out and have that opinion form part of the data. Excluding useful data is no way to develop a policy.

Telling them to “shut up and deal with it”, of course, doesn’t qualify as useful data but the idea that only women know what other women want seems odd to me. Their views are as disparate as those of us MCWMs.

Looking at it again the next morning, this is one bit where I could have been clearer with what I was trying to say.

The thing that mostly annoyed me, as highlighted by Rebecca, was the way some people don’t even seem to want to hear any objections to the current situation from women, as regards gender bias. It seems that, as soon as the women started to speak about how they felt and how it might be good for some things to change, a few guys bypassed any reasonable consideration of whether they might have a point and leapt straight to “Fuck you”. In some cases literally.

Now, I certainly didn’t mean to imply that all men should sit down and keep quiet throughout the whole discussion. Obviously we can have a lot of useful input here, and it wouldn’t be inappropriate for us to find a way to object if we thought we were being unfairly maligned, or if some really bad ideas are being expressed. But it didn’t seem to me like that was all that was happening here – I thought some guys were just being far too quick to shout them down, and weren’t even willing to hold back long enough to try and understand what the other side was trying to say.

A really simple thing is to just ask your female friends what would make something more accessible. example: I don’t go to any atheist/skeptic/freethought events because I have a kid and no car. That’s an extreme example maybe, but since women on average make less money, and there are more single custodial mothers than single custodial fathers, maybe it’s not that rare?

In my experience, events held/hosted by men tend to not make provisions for children. If I can’t bring my kid (because there’s not a kid’s room, a sitter, or kid-proofed space for him to play) then I can’t go. IDK, for me that’s the biggest deterrent to getting more involved in teh offline atheist community.

It’s not anyone’s fault and it’s not any one person’s specific sexism. It’s just true that I’m statistically more likely to be in poverty, as a female single parent. And those statistical likelihoods ARE influenced by past and present wage disparities and the fact that my ex hasn’t paid child support in nearly four years.

Found this post from Greta Christina’s link. As an atheist woman, I really appreciate it.

I think that, unfortunate as it is, it’s useful in general for allies (in this case, feminist men) to call out people in their own group (in this case, men) who are being problematic, because, in all honesty, men are likely to grant extra credibility to a fellow man (and white people will do the same with a fellow white person, etc).

However, there’s a difficult balance. The allies need to realize that it is part of their privilege that they have an easier time being recognized and taken seriously by the people they’re addressing. They need to make sure that, in their commendable attempts to address the -isms, they aren’t drowning out the voices of the people they’re trying to be allied with. In the case of feminist men, they need to stop sometimes, to take a break from making the case themselves, and think about how they can help promote women’s voices. True, those women will, as I said, have a harder time being taken seriously, but you’re not really achieving your objectives as a feminist if the discussion still ends up being dominated by men (albeit more sympathetic ones).

If it sounds like the previous two paragraphs contradict each other a bit, that’s because my point is that allies should help, but that they need to be careful and aware while they do it.

I also agree with Angie Jackson about the child-care thing (though I do not have a kid myself). When I went to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (a conference that combines normal technical conference stuff with discussion of the social issues that women in computing face, and recognition of prominent women in the field) last year, the conference provided day care services and set aside a room in the convention center for nursing mothers. I thought that was great.

Incidentally, as someone of mixed heritage (part-Hispanic), I think the atheist/skeptical community could do with this sort of discussion on racial/ethnic issues as well.

Yay, thanks! There’s a few features I’d love to be able to add to this place, and Intense Debate is certainly among them, but right now my options are pretty limited. I’m still being hosted on wordpress.com, and I can’t go round adding any of your fancy-shmancy gadgets and doohickeys unless I move on to find someplace to host it myself as a wordpress.org blog. I do plan on getting round to it someday, once I’ve figured out a few technical details. Like, um, how to do any of that stuff.

In the meantime, your thumbs-up is manually noted, and your approval shall be recorded in the official ledger.

JL: Yeah, drowning out the voices of women is definitely a danger I’m aware of and trying to avoid, even if we’re saying much the same things. I felt it was definitely worth saying something, though, at least once, to get my feelings on the record – and I don’t think there’s any danger of the conversation being dominated by sympathetic feminist men quite yet. It might still be a male-focused conversation, but hopefully the occasional post like this does something useful to redress the balance a little.

I have no doubt you’re right about racial and ethnic issues too, and I imagine most of what I said here could apply just as well to that area too. In particular, it’s worth taking the time to hear what any non-whites have to say about their experiences of discrimination and marginalisation in the community, and thinking hard and honestly about our role in this. (“Our” role being that of me and my fellow privileged white folks, I mean.)

I think just writing such a post as this, asking the other side to, at the very least, listen to the side that is feeling the way they do and try to understand why they feel the way they do, is doing a great service.

Raise the consciousness, especially of the people that never seem to bring these issues into their consciousness. The best way to do this is by men who consider themselves feminists. We are their best allies.

Much like atheism, our best allies are from the other side, the religious believers that are rational and reasonable about most things and can understand our feelings.

So, thank you cubiksrube, for helping to raise the consciousness of the public about the still-ongoing (since at least the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848) struggle of the feminist movement.

And I would love to see more women get involved in the skeptical movement. Why? The more the merrier, the better to show that we should be listened to, and, you know, ignoring half the population is just plain stupid.

Imagine how much farther we would be, technologically-speaking, if only women had been encouraged to go into scientific fields, especially physics and chemistry. It’s a shame it’s left to our imagination rather than reality.

Visiting from Greta Christina’s place. . . Somewhere on the Skepchick site, one of the commenters raised the point that skeptic meetings like TAM aren’t “family friendly”: not in the sense that people are stabbing each other on stage, but because the events and the environment aren’t appealing for children or for families with them. As a man who doesn’t gamble, doesn’t smoke and seldom drinks more than one beer a week, I can sympathize. Vegas isn’t my kind of town. A day of watching middle-aged men give PowerPoint presentations is bad enough, but when there isn’t even anything else to escape into. . . .

I know this post is pretty old, but I thought I’d put in my two cents about why I don’t go to skeptic or atheist events.
1) I have no car. Most of the local skeptic events are in some suburban bar. Public transportation does not go there.
2) Most events involve drinking after dark. I feel uncomfortable drinking with a group of strangers especially after dark and when I have no reliable transportation (chances are that I’d be going to a skeptic event alone). I spoke to the organizer about how I felt, and was told not to worry and to “come anyways.”
3) I don’t think there will be a lot of people over there like me (woman of color). That means that things affecting my life will probably be left undiscussed or dismissed. See number two for example.